On Friday, to conclude our week with Shunt, Mischa Twitchin presented four films of his performances: “Is Art Lighthearted?” (a dialogue between Theodor Adorno and Joseph Beuys); “The Piano Tuners” & “Eye Lust” (texts by Samuel Beckett and Paul Virilio, with music by György Kurtág); and, “The Children’s Emperor” & “The Pianist” (texts by Janusz Korczack and Wladislaw Szpilman). The presentation aimed to address the question: “why film, rather than ‘live’?” and invited discussion.
I may be wrong, but I believe all of these works were created as live performances at the Shunt vaults. Mischa's live works that I've seen have been short intricate tightly focused works, densely layered and constructed, with an emphasis on music, and close attention to painstaking construction of image - a face pressed against a sheet of glass, or a carefully lit and arranged pair of hands. The last I saw - I Wonder Sometimes Who I Am - in Edinburgh at the Forest Fringe.
In my opinion, Mischa is one of the great unsung geniuses of our time and I have a quick drink and discussion with him after the showing - over at the Hampstead Theatre. Like Dr. Johnson - you feel someone should be writing down every word he says. I did try but the scraps of phrases and sentences I put into the back of my academic diary hardly measure up to the event. In essence, he said that he had originally set out to record the live performances he had made, but quickly realised that every decision pertaining to the live performances needed to be reconsidered in the light of this separate and different form - 'something has to move within the static frame.' He had a quick stab at conventional approaches to acting - 'they try to make me feel something, through their presentation of feeling - it's just vulgar or kitsch.' His great aim, as always, is to make something 'that has autonomy' - not dependent, or constantly referring, to something outside itself. These films are not easy to watch. They are hard. They move slowly. They grind down your daily (more flippant) sense of yourself. But they grip your attention. And offer some kind of charged energy, or release, carefully enfolded within the layers of visual and aural material - suggesting something more wholesome and worthwhile. They take the time that they need, and engage you with their attention to detail - the knowledge that every decision has been carefully considered, and considered again. They are wrought out of time (and often darkness). I suppose the work in the theatre with which Mischa's work would most obviously invite comparison would be Castellucci's.